Discom didn't buy tools we paid for?

Power consumers in Delhi, who have paid crores of rupees for electricity supply, may not get the kind of service they are expecting. A new audit indicates that the city's largest power supplier may not have installed some of the equipment that it claims to have bought.
Auditors have found

Power consumers in Delhi, who have paid crores of rupees for electricity supply, may not get the kind of service they are expecting. A new audit indicates that the city's largest power supplier may not have installed some of the equipment that it claims to have bought.

Auditors have found that equipment installed at the BSES Rajdhani Power Limited's (BRPL) supply bases do not match details of the machinery the company claims exists on site. For instance, in January, auditors inspected 45 of the company's 990 kilovolt-ampere distribution transformers and found that particulars on none of them matched with what it had submitted for probe.

Serial number and purchase order details of seven other power transformers the BRPL furnished also didn't match with the equipment on site, the auditors found.

These are the initial findings of an ongoing audit the city's power regulator ordered last December after complaints about poor service fuelled suspicion that equipment power companies claim to have installed since 2002 may not exist on ground.

Audit findings were revealed through a Right to Information application MAIL TODAY filed last month. The power regulator's public information officer Rajasekhar Devaguptapu offered to show audit files on May 14.

Retired chief engineer (electrical) of the Punjab State Electricity Board K.S. Bahra said such discrepancies usually didn't arise if a power company actually installed whatever it bought.

"Details of all equipment and where they are installed are recorded in asset registers. If a machine is replaced, it is duly recorded in files," said Bahra.

The BRPL is backed by the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and it provides services to nearly every second power consumer in the National Capital - across south and west Delhi.

The company spent nearly Rs 2,463 crore between 2002 and 2009 to buy capital infrastructure such as the one audited.

This expenditure was then included in the tariff, which reflected in monthly electricity bills of consumers.

The audit is being done by Hyderabad- based Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), a research consultancy that has offered services to organisations such as the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and several ministries.

In an interim audit report prepared in January, the auditors suggested the BRPL had no clue about even the major equipment it claims to have bought during 2004-'06, the fiscals whose purchases the audit team chose to inspect first.

The power regulator had specifically asked the auditors to first inspect purchases the BRPL made from its sister concern, Reliance Energy Limited (REL), during 2004-'06.

The BRPL initially handed a list of its equipment with serial numbers and the location where they were installed to the auditors, who then began visiting supply bases to confirm if the same equipment actually existed.

The auditors checked at least 400 equipment in BRPL areas. In an interim report submitted to the power regulator on January 28, ASCI's senior consultant K. Balarama Reddi, who headed the audit, wrote, "It is felt that the BRPL is not in a position to identify even the major equipment purchased from REL to show to the inspecting team."

The power regulator's director (law/ tariff) A. K. Singh, who monitored the audit, termed these initial findings "quite startling and revealing". "The above findings clearly indicate that the unique serial number of the equipment allegedly purchased from M/ s REL, which BRPL had provided, are actually not found on the physical location," Singh wrote in the audit file on March 19.

The BRPL promised the mismatch between its records and what existed on- site, in case of the 45 distribution transformers, will be reconciled and also said some of these equipment had failed and were replaced.

The inquiry was to end this February but auditors could inspect just part of the equipment till then. It said the probe was too exhaustive and the companies didn't furnish details on time.

The power regulator has neither given the auditors more time nor has it closed the probe.

Chairman Berjinder Singh has decided to take up the matter once the tariff for this fiscal is announced.

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